African Affairs, 111/445, 551–575
doi: 10.1093/afraf/ads056
© The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved
WHITENESS, RACISM, AND AFRIKANER
IDENTITY IN POST-APARTHEID
SOUTH AFRICA
CORNEL VERWEY AND MICHAEL QUAYLE*
ABSTRACT
This article explores the production of post-apartheid Afrikaner identity
in South Africa. Centred around the private sphere of the braai, the
article draws on discursive psychology to investigate the participants’
dilemmas and struggles over their identity as Afrikaners, South Africans,
and Africans, and the ways in which these identities are being redefined.
The ‘backstage’ talk that is usually reserved for fellow whites or
Afrikaners illustrates a clear difference between public and private constructions of Afrikaner identity. While the participants rejected many
stereotypes of Afrikaner identity, they simultaneously recycled key discourses underlying apartheid ideology, particularly discourses of black
incompetence and whites under threat. Participants generally claimed
status as ‘Africans’ but strongly resisted assimilation with ‘Africa’ or a
broader African identity. The article concludes that the construction of
the Afrikaner community as embattled and systematically oppressed
might provide powerful support for extremism.
IN NOVEMBER 2010 THE AFRIKAANS AUTHOR Annelie Botes shocked
South Africa when she said in an interview: ‘I don’t like black people [Ek
hou nie van swartmense nie].’1 She went on to say that ‘In my formative
years in Uniondale there were no black people. If one was walking around
it was a trespassing crook. And then you must run, because he’s going to
catch you [In my grootwordjare op Uniondale was daar geen swartmense nie.
As daar een rondloop, was dit ‘n bandiet wat dros. En dan moet jy hárdloop,
want hy gaan jou vang].’ Throwing caution to the winds she went on: ‘I
know they’re just people like me. I know they have the same rights as me.
But I don’t understand them. And then … I don’t like them. I avoid them
*Cornel Verwey is a practising clinical psychologist working in Cape Town, South Africa,
and was affiliated with the University of KwaZulu-Natal at the time that this research took
place. Michael Quayle ([email protected]) is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology in the
School of Applied Human Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal. The authors would like
to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their very helpful suggestions.
1. Hanlie Retief, ‘Hanlie gesels met Annelie Botes’, Rapport, 20 November 2010, <http://
www.rapport.co.za/printArticle.aspx?iframe&aid=789b4c2e-9fdf-4a1e-847e-af6e8cf1b3ff&cid=
2356> (2 March 2011).
551
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because I’m scared of them [Ek wéét hulle’s net sulke mense soos ek. Ek wéét
hulle’t dieselfde regte as ek. Maar ek verstáán hulle nie. En dan … hou ek nie
van hulle nie. Ek vermy hulle, want ek’s bang vir hulle].’ In the course of the
interview she characterized blacks [swartmense] as angry, violent, uneducated, unskilled, incompetent, baboon-like, and criminal.
The public and media reaction to Botes’s frank interview was immediate and intense. The South African Literary Awards (SALA) association
withdrew their ZAR30,000 award for her book Thula Thula, and the
newspaper Die Burger Oos terminated her services as a columnist.2
However, Botes ‘said she had received about 1,000 emails supporting her
comments’, members of the public contributed ZAR10,150 to a fund to
replace her lost prize money, and sales of her latest novel Thula Thula
quadrupled.3 As one blogger noted, Annalie’s mistake – and the reason
for the groundswell of support – was that she said ‘things publicly that
one usually only hears around the braaivleis (barbeque) in white
suburbia’.4
This article explores backstage talk of white, middle-class Afrikaners
about blacks – the talk that is usually reserved for fellow whites or
Afrikaners only – and explores how Afrikaans people are reinterpreting
their identity in post-apartheid South Africa. As a way of stimulating talk
about identity, belonging, and exclusion, the interviewer asked participants to discuss the extent to which Afrikaners are Africans, with the aim
of teasing apart the tensions, dilemmas, and conflicting claims made by
individuals in order to see how Afrikaner identity is evolving. Participants’
responses were analysed with two questions in mind. First, how are group
boundaries being produced and reproduced to position Afrikaner identity
in relation to ‘Africa’ as a physical space and set of symbolic resources?
Second, what strategies or arguments are being used to construct postapartheid identity? Our analysis identifies three interconnected discursive
activities that participants used to produce a post-apartheid Afrikaner
identity. First, participants did much discursive work to discard certain
visible aspects of Afrikaner identity. Second, while they jettisoned these
aspects, they maintained whiteness as central to Afrikaner identity, thus
maintaining their claim to white privilege. Third, while rejecting apartheid, participants simultaneously recycled key discourses underlying racist
2. SAPA, ‘Afrikaans writer’s award stripped over comment’, Dispatch, 9 December 2010,
<http://www.dispatch.co.za/news/article/94> (2 March 2011).
3. Yolandi Groenewald and Tarryn Harbour, ‘Author Annelie Botes stands by racist comments’, Mail and Guardian [Cape Town], 26 November 2010, <http://mg.co.za/article/
2010-11-26-author-anneli-botes-stands-by-racist-comments> (2 March 2011).
4. Marius Brand, ‘Annelie Botes exposes braaivleis banter’, Web log comment, 1
December 2010, <http://mariusbrand.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/annelie-botes-exposesbraaivleis-banter/> (2 March 2011).
WHITENESS, RACISM, AND AFRIKANER IDENTITY
553
apartheid ideology, particularly discourses of black incompetence and
whites under threat. Taken together, these strategies produce an Afrikaner
identity based on racial exclusivity, racist notions of inherent black inferiority, and out-group threat.
Afrikaner identity
Historically, Afrikaner identity has drawn heavily on Afrikaner nationalism,
which depended on several tightly interwoven discourses. These centred
on themes of religious, racial, and cultural purity, superiority, calling, and
the struggle for autonomy against oppression – which included the struggle
for an independent language. J. C. van Rooy, in his capacity as chairman of
the Afrikaner Broederbond, made the following statement in 1944:
God created the Afrikaner people with a unique language, a unique philosophy of life,
and their own history and traditions in order that they might fulfil a particular calling and
destiny here in the southern corner of Africa. We must stand guard on all that is peculiar
to us and build upon it. We must believe that God has called us to be servants of his
righteousness in this place.5
In May 1948, the National Party came to power with the vision of a ‘new’
South Africa to be ‘built around a new hierarchy with Afrikaner identity
at the core’.6 Afrikaners were ‘encapsulated in a network of schools, social
clubs, churches, [and] cultural and business organizations which created
a self-referential Afrikaner ideological world’.7 The impact of this
complex network of religious and educational institutions cannot be overstated, since it ‘dominated the historical consciousness of most
Afrikaners’.8
Language is a complex matrix of symbols through which groups
express themselves, and is therefore intimately tied to notions of group
identity.9 The production and defence of languages serves to defend
claims for both unique and shared identity. For example, the cultural
recovery of Gaelic language(s) justifies claims for Scottish and Irish
independence from England,10 and arguments for transnational Celtic
5. Leonard L. Thompson, The Political Mythology of Apartheid (Vail-Ballou Press,
Binghamton, NY, 1985), p. 29.
6. Melissa E. Steyn, Whiteness Just Isn’t What It Used to Be: White identity in a changing
South Africa (State University of New York Press, Albany, NY, 2001), p. 37.
7. Jonathon Hyslop, ‘Why did apartheid’s supporters capitulate? “Whiteness”, class
and consumption in urban South Africa, 1985–1995’, Society in Transition 31, 1 (2000),
pp. 36–45, p. 5.
8. Ibid.
9. Glynis M. Breakwell, Threatened Identities (John Wiley and Sons Ltd, New York, NY,
1983).
10. Karl W. Deutsch, ‘International affairs: The trend of European nationalism – the language aspect’, The American Political Science Review 36, 3 (1942), pp. 533–41.
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AFRICAN AFFAIRS
identity.11 The struggle for Afrikaans as an independent and uniquely
African language had a similar importance in justifying the political
freedom of Afrikaners in South Africa:
Afrikaans linguistics emerged within the context of struggle for the recognition of
Afrikaans in all domains. The Afrikaner Broederbond and National Party gave this language struggle (taalstryd) a nationalist direction by incorporating it into the larger drive
toward political dominance.12
Afrikaans has always been a keystone of Afrikaner nationalism and
Afrikaner identity13 and is traditionally seen as the ‘repository of
Afrikaner heritage, Afrikaner creativity, Afrikaner soul, Afrikaner power
…’.14 However, with the advent of democracy, South African language
policy was revised and Afrikaans became just one of eleven official languages in South Africa.15 At the time of writing, the fall from grace of
Afrikaans as a language of power is ironically demonstrated by the fact
that the National Language Policy Framework is available online only in
English.16 Just as after the Second World War the German language was
shamefully associated with the holocaust and wartime aggression,
Afrikaans is currently symbolically associated with South Africa’s apartheid past.17
The end of apartheid has left Afrikaners to face an overwhelming existential crisis:
The future of the new democratic government is premised on the demise of everything
that Afrikaner nationalism has always stood for. Afrikaners cannot escape the fact that the
apartheid system was put in place in their name. The Nationalist ideology that shaped the
old South Africa, like all ethnocentric narratives, placed the Afrikaner in the centre. They
were the most important population group: they were in charge.18
11. Michael Dietler, ‘“Our ancestors the Gauls”: archaeology, ethnic nationalism, and the
manipulation of Celtic identity in modern Europe’, American Anthropologist 96, 3 (1994),
pp. 584–605.
12. John Joseph and Talbot Taylor, Ideologies of Language (Taylor and Francis, London
and New York, NY, 1990), p. 132.
13. Vie Webb and Mariana Kriel, ‘Afrikaans and Afrikaner nationalism’, International
Journal of the Sociology of Language 144 (2000), pp. 19–49.
14. Melissa E. Steyn, ‘Rehabilitating a whiteness disgraced: Afrikaner white talk in postapartheid South Africa’, Communication Quarterly 52 (2004), p. 158.
15. Department of Arts and Culture, ‘National Language Policy Framework’ (Department
of Arts and Culture, Government of the Republic of South Africa, 2003), <http://www.dac.
gov.za/policies/LPD_Language%20Policy%20Framework_English%20_2_.pdf> (22 February
2011).
16. Ibid.
17. Michael G. Clyne, The German Language in a Changing Europe (Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 1995); Hermann Giliomee, ‘The rise and possible demise of Afrikaans as
public language’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 10, 1 (2004), pp. 25–58.
18. Steyn, ‘Rehabilitating a whiteness disgraced’, p. 154, empasis in original.
WHITENESS, RACISM, AND AFRIKANER IDENTITY
555
Frederick van Zyl Slabbert19 argues that now that apartheid has failed,
there is a general feeling of confusion and lack of direction amongst
Afrikaners. This existential crisis culminates in the simple question: ‘Who
are we?’20 Van Zyl Slabbert asks the following questions:
And what now? Who will associate freely with the concept ‘Afrikaner’? How will those
who linked their Afrikaner identity to the control of political power participate in the
process of giving new content to the word Afrikaner?21
The word ‘Afrikaner’ means ‘African’. To some extent, claiming to be
African is therefore at the core of Afrikaner identity. Many prominent
(and often dissident) Afrikaner writers have engaged with the question of
whether Afrikaners are African. Breyten Breytenbach argues that, despite
the fact that ‘Afrikaans is just the Afrikaans word for African’, he both
belongs and does not belong in Africa.22 Similarly, Max Du Preez writes
that:
Just as I cannot change the colour of my skin, I cannot become an American, European
or Australian. I would be an alien forever, like a polar bear in the Pretoria zoo. My soul is
African. My skin colour is the only European thing about me … African/Afrikaner. I am
both. I call myself after the continent twice … I am a native of this land, but unlike most
other natives, I am pale.23
However, Afrikaners are not the only Africans and it is therefore tricky to
claim an African identity while maintaining racial, ideological, and cultural purity. Therefore, ‘African’ was not used as a racial category under
apartheid:
The problem was it translated back in the Boer language into the word Afrikaner, which
was the very name the white Dutch descendants called themselves. Africans were referred
to by white officialdom as black or Bantu.24
However, with the fall of apartheid, ‘African’ is now a self-selected racial
classification essential to government policies such as employment
equity.25 Therefore the rhetorical struggle over who can lay claim to being
‘African’ has important consequences for defining who belongs, who
deserves access to resources, and the fairness of structural redress such as
19. Frederick van Zyl Slabbert, Tough Choices (Tafelberg, Cape Town, 2000).
20. Steyn, ‘Rehabilitating a whiteness disgraced’, p. 153.
21. van Zyl Slabbert, Tough Choices, p. 79.
22. Breyten Breytenbach, The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (Taurus, Cape Town,
1984), p. 321.
23. Max du Preez, Pale Native: Memories of a renegade reporter (Zebra Press, Cape Town,
2003), p. 5.
24. David Stead, Bola Olufunwa, Fiona Ledger, and Penny Boreham, ‘The story of Africa’
BBC World Service, no date, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/
index.shtml> (17 June 2010).
25. For example, ‘South African Employment Equity Act, No. 55 of 1998’ (Republic of
South Africa Government Gazette, Cape Town, 1998).
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AFRICAN AFFAIRS
affirmative action. For example, the leader of the Vryheidsfront Plus (a
right-wing political party representing many Afrikaners), Pieter Mulder,
argued in Parliament that he is ‘an Afrikaner and an African’ and that
since he is not a European (from Europe) he reports his race on official
forms as ‘African’.26
However, whiteness is historically linked to privilege.27 Whiteness is
almost universally a racial or ethnic category that also offers the opportunity to maintain this privilege.28 In South Africa, this privilege manifested
itself in terms of both political power and economic advantage, which was
reserved for white South Africans. While political power is no longer the
privilege of white South Africans, economic privilege continues.29
Although major strides have been made towards equity in the middle
class, little has changed at the economic extremes. For example, in the
job market, 27.9 percent of black South Africans are unemployed compared to just 4.6 percent of whites.30 Despite the fact that change is slow
and uneven, white South Africans are grappling with massive shifts in
their position and identity in South Africa:
The social revisions brought about by the political realignment of the different population
groups in relation to each other are far-reaching, complex and multiple. Not least among
these is the re-negotiating of identities. South Africans, willingly or unwillingly, successfully or unsuccessfully, are engaged in one of the most profound collective psychological
adjustments happening in the contemporary world.31
Afrikaner nationalism constructed and maintained Afrikaner identity, as
well as the ideology of apartheid. The use of Afrikaner cultural and historical symbols (including the Afrikaans language) formed a very important
part of this construction. Afrikaner nationalism was instrumental in constructing Afrikaner identity as the most powerful ethnic identity in apartheid South Africa. This ‘version’ of Afrikaner identity was then
maintained by a self-referential world. Afrikaner nationalism, apartheid,
26. Pieter W. A. Mulder, ‘Repliek: Pres. Mbeki se staatsrede’, in Hansard, 14 February
2007 (Parliament of South Africa, Pretoria, 2007), pp. 29–30.
27. Margaret Wetherell (ed.), Identities, Groups and Social Issues (Sage, London, 1996).
28. Meredith J. Green, Christopher C. Sonn and Jabulane Matsebula, ‘Reviewing whiteness: theory, research, and possibilities’, South African Journal of Psychology 37, 3 (2007), pp.
389–419.
29. Kgomotso Nyanto, ‘South Africa: apartheid legacy difficult to shift‘, New African (July
2006), pp. 22–23, <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h& AN=
21500168&site=ehost-live> (9 November 2008); Thembisa Waetjen, ‘Measures of redress:
defining disadvantage in a university access programme’, South African Review of Sociology
37, 2 (2006), pp. 200–17.
30. South African Institute of Race Relations, ‘South Africa Survey 2008/2009:
Employment and incomes’ (South African Institute of Race Relations, 2009), <http://www.
sairr.org.za/research-and-publications/south-africa-survey-2008-2009/employment-incomes/
2008-2009%20-%20Employment%20%28Web%29.pdf> (22 February 2011).
31. Steyn, Whiteness Just Isn’t What It Used to Be, p. xxi.
WHITENESS, RACISM, AND AFRIKANER IDENTITY
557
and Afrikaner identity were, for many years, practically inseparable. The
fall of apartheid, and the failure of Afrikaner nationalism, therefore represented an intense crisis for Afrikaner identity. Melissa Steyn analysed
letters to Rapport, an Afrikaans-language daily newspaper, and found that
Afrikaans correspondents were engaged in ‘intense’, ‘active’, and ‘aggressive’ defence and production of identity.32
Our analysis explores how Afrikaner identity is being constructed in
post-apartheid South Africa, focusing particularly on the relationship of
Afrikaner identity to whiteness and African-ness. However, where Steyn’s
study explored the production of post-apartheid identity in public contexts such as newspapers,33 this article explores identity talk in the
private, backstage context of private interviews at social events hosted at
participants’ homes.
The discursive psychology approach
This study applied the lens of social constructivism and, in particular, discursive psychology, to the ‘ongoing, self-conscious, and contested discursive activity’34 of constructing post-apartheid Afrikaner identity in talk.
This approach explores how language and symbolic resources are actively
deployed by participants to produce identities; how particular identities
are rhetorically defended against implicit alternatives; and how these identities, as accomplishments, link to broader issues of power and ideology.35
The analysis cannot claim to describe comprehensively all the ways in
which Afrikaner identity can be constructed, but instead it identifies and
describes specific strategies that can be used to produce particular forms
of identity and how these identities work as discursive and rhetorical
productions.36
We conducted interviews in Bloemfontein, the capital of the Free State,
and one of the firmest bastions of Afrikaner power under apartheid.
Bloemfontein has an urban population of about 111,000 people and a
broader rural district, Manguang, with a population of about 700,000
people. In Bloemfontein city, Afrikaans whites are still in a numerical majority. Of the 111,000 residents 72,000 (65 percent) are white, and 89
percent of these white residents report Afrikaans as their mother-tongue.
32. Steyn, ‘Rehabilitating a whiteness disgraced’, p. 162.
33. For example, ibid.
34. Ibid., p. 149.
35. Derek Edwards, ‘Discursive psychology’ in Kristine L. Fitch and Robert E. Sanders
(eds), Handbook of Language and Social Interaction (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah,
NJ, 2005).
36. David Silverman, Interpreting Qualitative Data: Methods for analysing talk, text and
interaction (Sage, London, 2001).
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AFRICAN AFFAIRS
In the broader Manguang district, white Afrikaners represent only 10.7
percent of the population.37 In the past Afrikaners dominated local government structures in Manguang. Their representation now matches their
demographic profile, with roughly 11 percent of the jobs in the district
municipality currently held by whites (of whom the majority are
Afrikaners).38
A snowball sampling technique was used, with the only criterion for selection being that the participants considered themselves to be Afrikaners,
and were accepted as such by the two acquaintances of the first author
who facilitated contact. Each of these two facilitators invited several of
their own friends to their homes to participate in the interviews about
Afrikaner identity. All participants, as it turned out, were white, middleclass Afrikaans speakers who live in the suburban setting of Blomfontein
(see Table 1 for demographic details). We intentionally sampled middleclass people who were not members of extreme right-wing political
organizations.
The interviews took place on two separate evenings at the homes of the
facilitators. On both evenings, unsolicited by the interviewer, the hosts
decided to organized impromptu braais (barbeques). The guests – at what
had now become social functions – took turns to join the interviewer (the
first author, a white male Afrikaner) in a private room for individual semistructured interviews. The interviewer observed talk around the braais
during the short breaks between individual interviews. No interviewing
took place during these periods with the groups.
Interviews centred on the following three questions, but allowed participants to raise issues that were not in the interview schedule:
How would you define an Afrikaner?
How would you define an African?
What do you make of the fact that ‘Afrikaner’ is the Afrikaans word for ‘African’?
The social context of a private braai attended exclusively by white
Afrikaners at a friend’s house produced a racially and culturally homogeneous private space, and elicited the type of in-group talk that – as
Annelie Botes pointed out – is rarely spoken in public or mixed settings.
Of course, the braai is a distinctive social arena associated with alcohol,
rugby, hunting, meat, and hypermasculinity. These features of the interview context certainly impacted on the talk observed, but these culturally
37. Statistics South Africa, ‘Census 2001 Interactive Statistics’ (SSA Interactive Statistics
Interface, 2012).
38. Mangaung Local Municipality, ‘Annual Report 2010/11’ (Mangaung Local Municipality,
Bloemfontein, 2011).
WHITENESS, RACISM, AND AFRIKANER IDENTITY
559
Table 1. Participant demographics
Age
Occupation
Female
31
29
25
22
Personal assistant
Restaurant manager
Guidance counsellor
Student
Male
71
64
55
34
34
32
32
30
30
28
27
Retired government employee
Retired businessman
Farmer
Operations manager
Advertising consultant
Bar manager
Carpenter
Hairdresser
Lawyer
Disc Jockey
Plumber
homogeneous social events are a common feature of white South African
culture and the attitudes recorded are likely to be generalizable to events
of this type.
Interviewing, transcription and analysis was done in Afrikaans in order
to retain as much of the original meaning as possible. Unfortunately, it is
unavoidable that any translation implies an added layer of interpretation.
Interviews were analysed using a discursive and rhetorical approach,
paying careful attention to strategies by which participants constructed
and defended identity positions and the discursive resources they drew on
to do so.39 In this frame, identity is seen as something socially constructed and fluid. The results cannot be used to argue that all Afrikaners
everywhere construct their identity in similar ways. The results do,
however, demonstrate important features of the strategies and constraints
of identity production for Afrikaners a decade and a half after the fall of
apartheid.
Producing a post-apartheid Afrikaner identity
Our analysis and discussion focus on three interconnected discursive
activities that participants used to produce a post-apartheid Afrikaner
39. Michael Billig, Arguing and Thinking: A rhetorical approach to social psychology
(Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 1996).
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identity. First, participants did much discursive work to discard certain
visible aspects of Afrikaner identity such as Afrikaner stereotypes, history,
and culture, while rejecting overt racism and downplaying the importance
of the Afrikaans language in contemporary Afrikaner identity. Cutting ties
with the apartheid past sanitizes Afrikaner identity and limits culpability
for the historical wrongdoings. Second, while they jettisoned these aspects
of Afrikaner identity, they maintained whiteness as central to Afrikaner
identity. This strategically distances Afrikaner identity from black African
identity and lays claim to white privilege. Third, while making displays of
rejecting apartheid, participants simultaneously recycled key discourses
underlying racist apartheid ideology, particularly discourses of black incompetence and whites under threat. Far from redrawing the cultural
boundaries as they integrate into the ‘rainbow nation’, these strategies
produce a ghettoized Afrikaner identity based on racial exclusivity, racist
notions of inherent black inferiority, and out-group threat.
Discarding ‘the Voortekkers and that shit’:
(1) You know, you can find yourself in shit street by calling yourself an Afrikaner today.40
(2) Um … so that is how it fits into my life … I, uh, prefer not to tell people that I am
Afrikaans.41
Participants spoke frequently about the disadvantages of being seen to be
an Afrikaner. As one participant said (Interview extract 1), calling yourself
an Afrikaner can land you ‘in kakstraat’ (in shit street). One’s identity as
Afrikaner can therefore be a liability – but it is not being an Afrikaner that
is problematic, but calling yourself an Afrikaner. So being Afrikaans
becomes something to be hidden, something that you prefer not to speak
about (Interview extract 2). However, simply not speaking about it is not
enough – participants also actively distanced themselves from many
stereotypical aspects of Afrikaner identity like conservative dress, culture,
language, history, and overt racism.
For example, in response to the question ‘How would you define an
Afrikaner?’ many participants referred to gross stereotypes of the conservative Afrikaner:
(3) And my family don’t wear long socks and short pants (laughing) you know, I mean
… so um … in that way I feel well, it’s just, it’s not who me and my family are.42
The description of the Afrikaner in long socks and short pants came up
several times and was always followed by laughter and a disclaimer distan-
40.
41.
42.
Interview, male, 27 years, 5 December 2007.
Interview, female, 25 years, 30 November 2007.
Ibid.
WHITENESS, RACISM, AND AFRIKANER IDENTITY
561
cing the participants’ own identity. The image dates from the 1970s and
1980s when many Afrikaner men wore ‘safari suits’ and matching long
socks (combs were often carried inside the socks, as mentioned by some
participants).43 Participants often drew on this outdated caricature as an
extreme against which they could demonstrate their more modern,
progressive, and pluralistic versions of Afrikaner identity.
Other caricatures that participants derided included the Voortrekkers –
the Boer pioneers, who trekked inland from the Cape to find freedom
and self-determination, and who have always been a central symbol of
Afrikaner nationalism.44 In the apartheid education system ‘The Great
Trek’ was a central part of the national history syllabus and most children
studied the government-sponsored story of the Voortrekkers every year for
most of their primary and high-school careers.45
(4) I can’t even remember the story of the Voortrekkers anymore. I can, I learnt it, but I
can’t remember it. For me it’s … go and ask someone to tell you about it, I can guarantee
you (laugh) they won’t be able to remember either, nobody in my generation.46
(5) You know, the Voortrekkers and that shit … good for them (laughs), good for them,
but that’s old news now … .47
In a similar way to the image of short pants and long socks, the image of
the Voortrekkers locates key aspects of Afrikaner identity in the distant
past – so distant that ‘nobody in our generation’ will be able to remember
it. The first participant quoted here (Interview extract 4) distances herself
by forgetting (‘I learnt it, but I can’t remember it’), but the second participant is more forceful, calling the story of the Voortrekkers ‘shit’. However,
it is also subtly suggested that it is not just the Voortrekkers that are being
distanced, but ‘all that shit’, which we suspect refers to the baggage of
Afrikaner nationalism. Therefore, by jettisoning ‘the Voortrekkers’, they
also distance themselves from the Afrikaner nationalist discourses which
the Voortrekkers represent. This rejection of Afrikaner culture was not
limited to caricatured symbols, but was sometimes targeted more broadly:
(6) My life is not about … where I came from, it is about where I am going … culture is
important, but I am not a big culture guy … .48
This participant makes it very clear that his culture is something that
belongs in the past (‘where I come from’). Afrikaner culture might be
‘important’, but it is not very important to him, as if clinging to Afrikaner
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
Pat Hopkins, Cringe, the Beloved Country (Zebra Press, Cape Town, 2003).
Steyn, Whiteness Just Isn’t What It Used to Be.
See Thompson, The Political Mythology of Apartheid.
Interview, female, 22 years, 5 December 2007.
Interview, male, 32 years, 5 December 2007.
Ibid.
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culture could hold him back. By maintaining that ‘where he is going’ is
more important, he jettisons Afrikaner culture as something ‘important’
but not personally useful and which might interfere with his future in
post-apartheid South Africa. The following participant goes further and
actively criticizes Afrikaner culture:
(7) Q: So there is a part of you, of your traditional culture that has been handed to you
… from your ancestors, which has been sort of discredited … ?
A: Yes.
Q: Which sort of …
A: It, it, it, it offends me. That’s all … that’s all that our culture is made of. That’s all, our
culture is racism … . We have no culture at all.49
He states that Afrikaner culture is synonymous with racism and he finds it offensive. This participant distances himself from his culture to such an extent
that he believes Afrikaners are left with ‘no culture at all’. Another participant
described the ways of the ‘old Afrikaners’ by referring to the stereotypical
Afrikaner farmer and describing the slow-paced ‘life on the farm’. He then
continues to criticize those Afrikaners who still cling to that way of living:
(8) Yes they have. They definitely got stuck.
Q: Why don’t you live your life according to those rules?
A: My life is too fast for that, man. That’s how it is. Today’s life is just faster. 50
This participant therefore constructs the life of the stereotypical old-style
Afrikaner farmer as slow, outdated and ‘stuck’, in contrast to his own life
that is ‘just faster’. This represents stereotypical Afrikaner culture as outdated and ill-suited to the fast pace of modern life. This seems to be
another way of jettisoning the ‘ox-wagon identity’ he describes elsewhere.
These participants make every effort to discard central metaphors of
the Afrikaner identity tied into historical Afrikaner nationalism, such as
history, language, overt racism, and boer culture (the farm culture). It
appears that, to some extent, these participants view their identity as
Afrikaners as a liability in post-apartheid South Africa.
It surprised us that participants also devalued the cultural importance
of the Afrikaans language. Since Afrikaners often use ‘Afrikaans’ as a
synonym for ‘Afrikaner’,51 we expected the language to be central to
Afrikaner identity. We were therefore surprised that some participants
were eager to distance themselves from the language, or at least from the
taalstryd (the struggle for language).
49. Interview, male, 34 years, 30 November 2007.
50. Interview, male, 27 years, 5 December 2007.
51. Cornel T. Verwey, ‘“Hoe ek die hele storie sien … ”: present-day narratives of
Afrikaner identity’ (University of Cape Town, unpublished honours dissertation, 2005).
WHITENESS, RACISM, AND AFRIKANER IDENTITY
563
(9) I, I am not one of those people who want to fight for Afrikaans … It is only the language I speak … I, I … it’s a communication tool, man.52
Historically Afrikaans was much more than ‘a communication tool’ for
Afrikaners and was intimately tied to the very core of Afrikaner nationalism and Afrikaner identity. Given the historical importance of the struggle
for language in the emergence and maintenance of an Afrikaner nation, it
initially seemed strange to us that modern Afrikaner identity could be
produced by denying the importance of die taal (the language). However,
on reflection we began to understand that expressing pride or pleasure in
the Afrikaans language has become difficult because of its central place in
the racist, supremacist Afrikaner nationalism that produced and sustained
apartheid. As André Brink argued, even before the oppression of apartheid had reached its height:
What, at the beginning of the Language Movement, was the forte of Afrikaans (the fact
that it was a political instrument) has developed into an Achilles heel. For as the
Afrikaner became politically dominant his [sic] language began to bear a stamp of exclusiveness – White Afrikaner Nationalist Calvinist exclusiveness.53
Therefore, distancing oneself from the language struggle, like distancing
oneself from the Voortrekkers, is a way of disowning the worst features of
Afrikaner history. However, at other times participants did refer to language when asked about their identity and sometimes understood questions about general Afrikaner identity to be questions about language:
(10) Q: How important is being an Afrikaner to you?
A: No it’s, for me it’s not an issue whether I am an Afrikaner or not, whether you are an
Afrikaner or English … it’s not about the language, for me it’s more about the
personality.54
It should first be noted that the above participant answers a question that
pertains to his ethnic identity as Afrikaner by referring to the Afrikaans
language, but downplays the importance of language to his identity.
Participants not only downplayed the personal importance of Afrikaans,
but the importance of Afrikaans in national affairs:
(11) Like I’m saying, one must try and get a balance in South Africa where you say, okay,
Afrikaans is just as, just as important as South Sotho or, or English.55
This argument for equality of languages goes against the long struggle
for the recognition of Afrikaans as a dominant language in South
52. Interview, male, 32 years, 5 December 2007.
53. André P. Brink, ‘English and the Afrikaans writer’, English in Africa 3, 1 (1976),
pp. 34–46.
54. Interview, male, 28 years, 5 December 2007.
55. Ibid.
564
AFRICAN AFFAIRS
Africa, which formed such a prominent part of Afrikaner cultural
history.56 Indeed, despite the long battle for supremacy with English,
this young Afrikaner is now arguing for linguistic equality and
‘balance’. Bear in mind that, in apartheid South Africa, attempts were
made to teach even Southern Sotho speakers in Afrikaans, and ‘equality
of languages’ was barely extended to English. While South Africa had
two official languages, it is common knowledge that from 1948 the
South African civil service was dominated by Afrikaans. Despite the
fact that much of the struggle for Afrikaans as a language was waged
‘against’ English, the following participants describe their everyday use
of English as camouflage:
(12) Q: Do you ever feel weird when you are in a group, or in company … and you are
the only Afrikaner there?
A: No, it’s easy for me to switch, say if everybody is English, and to speak English and …
to fit in.57
Note that she does not deny the fact that she might be self-conscious
about being an Afrikaner, but instead argues that it is ‘easy’ for her to
‘switch’ and ‘fit in’. In other words, she can easily jettison her language,
which would then make her less conspicuous as an Afrikaner. Many participants agreed that the Afrikaans language maybe an identity liability, to
be carefully hidden in public.
(13) Q: The fact that you are an Afrikaner. Do you ever get a bit of an, um … a type of a
self-consciousness about it or, are you aware of it?
A: Ah no, because I can speak English so well. So I don’t feel like that. You see the big
thing, the big thing for me is, I can speak English properly. You know, it is my language
of choice and it is the language of, sort of the working world. So because I have that, then
I don’t feel that I am … not that disadvantaged.58
Like the participants above, this participant does not deny that being an
Afrikaner can be problematic or uncomfortable in modern-day South
Africa, but instead denies being ‘self-conscious’ or ‘aware’ of her identity
as an Afrikaner because she ‘can speak English so well’ – she can speak it
‘properly’ and is therefore not ‘that’ disadvantaged. The subtext, of
course, is that if you cannot speak English properly, then you cannot
avoid being self-conscious about being an Afrikaner and you cannot avoid
being disadvantaged.
The historical stereotype of Afrikaners is closely associated with racism
and participants were acutely aware that Afrikaners are often assumed to
56. Hermann B. Giliomee, The Afrikaners: Biography of a people (Tafelberg, Cape Town,
2003); David Harrison, The White Tribe of Africa (Macmillan, Johannesburg, 1985).
57. Interview, female, 31 years, 30 November 2007.
58. Interview, female, 25 years, 30 November 2007.
WHITENESS, RACISM, AND AFRIKANER IDENTITY
565
be racist. As a result, talk about Afrikaner identity also had to defend the
speaker against potential criticisms of racism:
(14) Look, there are many people who don’t like it when those around them make racist
comments … .59
(15) Look, I watch what I say. Often at work there will be a joke that I heard … which is
maybe a little bit racist, but it’s not that bad … but because I know that they might take it
the wrong way, then I don’t do it. I am very aware of not saying anything in front of
people of a different colour which might offend them … but yes, when I get home I swear
and I say that type of thing.60
These participants describe ‘racist comments’ and ‘racist jokes’ as something that people ‘don’t like’ or ‘might take the wrong way’. Therefore
they are neither admitting that they are racist nor claiming that they are
not – but they are arguing that their identity forces them to be vigilant
against perceptions of racism and that utterances that might be ‘taken the
wrong way’ must be reserved for an in-group audience. In other words:
(16) Look, don’t tell a kaffir he’s a kaffir … he’s a human being, man.61
This comment is deeply cryptic. It is not ‘don’t tell a black man he’s a
kaffir’, but don’t tell a ‘kaffir he’s a kaffir’, suggesting that the unspeakable
derogative is also the preferred term, but that you must say ‘he’s a human
being, man’ in public. On the other hand, the participant may be making
an argument for fraternity and equality, but it seems unlikely. Other
participants argued that this kind of blatant racism is part of the ‘old
Afrikaner’ past and something that does not form part of modern
Afrikaner identity:
(17) Um … there is … some Afrikaners that are still old Afrikaners that still swear and shout
and it’s ‘kaffir’ and ‘meid ’ and … you know they still go out in the evenings and go look for
them to bliksem them [beat them up] and that type of thing, they are still out there.62
The above quote deals with ‘shouting’, ‘swearing’, and ‘going out’, all of
which are public acts of ‘those Afrikaners’. However, this is the same participant who earlier stated that ‘when he goes home’ he ‘swears’ and says
‘that type of thing’ himself (Interview extract 15). The following participant also refers to racist violence as something that should not be used to
‘categorize’ him. He juxtaposes racist violence with the image of the
stereotypical ‘brandy-drinking’ Afrikaner, which is similar to the dated
image of the Afrikaner in long socks and short pants discussed above.
Other participants drew on similar imagery:
59.
60.
61.
62.
Interview, male, 27 years, 5 December 2007.
Interview, male, 34 years, 30 November 2007.
Interview, male, 32 years, 5 December 2007.
Interview, male, 34 years, 30 November 2007.
566
AFRICAN AFFAIRS
(18) You know, don’t be an asshole that drives around in your bakkie [ pick-up truck] on
weekends assaulting people just because they are black. Nicely poesdronk, full of brandy,
hates kaffirs and … driving around beating people. I am sorry, I am better than that. So I
won’t let myself be categorized like that.63
He maintains that he is ‘better than’ the stereotype he is condemning.
Yet, while he is condemning violence against black people (in public), he
still uses a deeply derogatory term (‘kaffir’) in his condemnation of racist
violence in the private context of the interview. Elsewhere he stated that ‘I
am not saying that you shouldn’t hate kaffirs’ and thus condoned covert
racism. Therefore, he is not condemning racism, but only the public violence often associated with racist Afrikaners.
These extracts demonstrate that there are some aspects of Afrikaner
identity that are being jettisoned in both public and private, such as the
image of the boer with long socks and short pants; or the violent, brandydrinking, bakkie-driving racist. Other aspects of Afrikaner identity can only
be fully exposed or experienced in private or in like-minded company. In
public your Afrikaans language must be concealed; you must ‘fit in’; you
must suppress your sense of humour to avoid appearing racist; and you
must conceal actual racism to avoid ‘be[ing] categorized like that’.
While participants discard certain (no longer useful) aspects of their
identity that threaten to tie them to the past, the next section shows how
they work to retain more useful aspects of their identity. Participants keep
whiteness, with all the benefits that this entails, as a central part of
Afrikaner identity.
Reclaiming whiteness: Whiteness is not about ‘race’, but about power
and privilege.64 In post-apartheid South Africa, as in apartheid South
Africa, ‘for most, if not all, South Africans race remains a primary constituent of identity’.65 Participants universally defined the boundaries of
the category ‘Afrikaner’ first by race and then by language:
(19) Q: How would you define an Afrikaner?
A: An Afrikaner is a white person who speaks Afrikaans. Short and sweet.66
Whites lived on the privileged side of a society that used race as an organizing principle in apartheid South Africa. It is hardly surprising that participants claim whiteness first and Afrikaans second in defining Afrikaner
identity. By holding on to whiteness the participants are holding on to
63. Interview, male, 27 years, 5 December 2007.
64. Natasha Distiller and Melissa E. Steyn, ‘Introduction: under construction’ in Natasha
Distiller and Melissa E. Steyn (eds), Under Construction: “Race” and identity in South Africa
today (Heinemann, Sandton, South Africa, 2004), pp. 1–11, p. 7.
65. Ibid.
66. Interview, male, 34 years, 30 November 2007.
WHITENESS, RACISM, AND AFRIKANER IDENTITY
567
power and privilege. Therefore, while they are prepared to jettison critical
elements of Afrikaner history, language and culture, they are not letting go
of their whiteness. Participants not only protect their own whiteness, but
they are aware of sharing whiteness with English-speaking South Africans:
(20) Q: Do you feel that Afrikaners are starting to accept Africa more?
A: Yeees … uhh [big sigh] No! I, I, I personally feel that Afrikaners and English have
moved closer together …
Q: Mm.
A: Uh, after ‘94.
Q: Mm-mm.
A: Uh, probably because it’s whites. You know.67
Although South African whites still maintain many forms of power in
South Africa, 1994 is seen symbolically as the year in which overt political
power was lost. Although much has been made of South Africa’s relatively
peaceful transition to democracy, this participant references the event in
terms of not accepting Africa (and Africans) more. On the contrary, following the loss of overt political power, he says Afrikaners have not
moved closer to Africans (whom he previously defined as ‘black’) but
closer to English speakers (‘because it’s whites’). Steyn maintains that this
‘psychological path is well known; the tropes that bind English and
Afrikaans into a common front of privileged “whites” are well
rehearsed’.68 The following participant describes his sense of shared identity in marginalization:
(21) Probably because it’s now sort of … it feels as if it’s sort of against us, against
Afrikaners now and so on, and especially against the white man these days.69
Not only do these participants hold on to their whiteness, they appear to
be much more conscious of sharing this whiteness with English speakers,
who are now partners in a society that is ‘against us’, ‘against Afrikaners’
and ‘especially against the white man’ in general. Why did these participants actively jettison language, culture, and history from definitions of
their identity but emphasize their whiteness, despite the fact that whiteness is also constructed as a liability in modern South Africa? We argue
that there are three reasons. The first is that whiteness is not something
that can be jettisoned so easily, since it is literally ‘written’ on the skin.
The second lies in a shared sense of being under threat. The third lies in
pragmatic usefulness: while language, history, and culture are part of
Afrikaner identity, they are not useful in post-apartheid South Africa.
67.
68.
and
69.
Interview, male, 64 years, 5 December 2007.
Melissa E. Steyn, ‘Rehybridising the creole: new South African Afrikaners’ in Distiller
Steyn (eds), Under Construction, pp. 70–85, p. 76.
Interview, male, 34 years, 30 November 2007.
568
AFRICAN AFFAIRS
Whiteness, on the other hand, still affords access to power and privilege.
While political power is no longer the privilege of white South Africans,
economic privilege continues.70 Although major strides have been made
towards equity in the middle class, little has changed at the economic
extremes. For example, black representation at top management level has
only reached 22.2 percent.71 At the other extreme of the job market, 27.9
percent of black South Africans are unemployed compared to just 4.6
percent of whites.72 Meanwhile, there were approximately 5,863 white
households living in informal ‘squatter’ settlements in 2007, compared to
1,179,006 black households in similar circumstances,73 underlining the
extent to which white families have access to economic and cultural
capital compared to black families.
Rejecting apartheid but resurrecting apartheid ideology: Before
discussing how participants produced an image of radicalized racial
threat, it is important to note that apartheid was almost universally condemned. The following is a good example of how this was usually done:
(22): Apartheid was the biggest injustice ever … it should never have happened.74
Although most participants rejected apartheid outright in the same
manner, they did so in the shortest possible way. There was little reflection on apartheid, its effects, or ongoing injustice related to the previous
centuries of white rule. If one considers the vast difference in the amount
and intensity of discursive work that participants do to reject apartheid,
compared to the other constructions, it places the sincerity of this condemnation under question. It seems plausible that condemnation of
apartheid is seen as the ‘right’ answer. At the same time, participants
were acutely aware that they are living in a country ‘that is redefining itself
as African’:75
(23) Q: Do you think that there is more of a blending of Africa and South Africa? Do you
think that South Africa is becoming more African?
70. Kgomotso Nyanto, ‘South Africa: apartheid legacy difficult to shift’, New African 453
(2006), pp. 22–3; Waetjen, ‘Measures of redress’.
71. The figures are less than desireable’, Financial Mail [South Africa], 4 April 2008.
<http://free.financialmail.co.za/projects08/topempowerment/zftec.htm> (25 February 2011).
72. South African Institute of Race Relations, ‘South Africa Survey 2008/2009:
Employment and incomes’.
73. South African Institute of Race Relations, ‘South Africa Survey 2008/2009: Living
conditions and communications’ (South African Institute of Race Relations, 2009), <http
://www.sairr.org.za/research-and-publications/south-africa-survey-2008-2009/living-conditionscommunications/Survey%202008-2009%20–%20Living%20Conditions%20%28Web%29%
2026.10.2009%20%28A%29.pdf> (22 February 2011).
74. Interview, male, 55 years, 30 November 2007.
75. Steyn, Whiteness Just Isn’t What It Used to Be, p. xxii.
WHITENESS, RACISM, AND AFRIKANER IDENTITY
569
A: Yes now, now for sure … now for sure. More than in the past. Um … in the past, especially with the white government and that, people … you kept your … you kept your
borders closed … now, ag yesterday man, it’s becoming … it’s becoming Africa now and
… um … I think the Afrikaner has a problem with that … that it’s becoming Africa now.
It’s getting too close to home I think. In the past it was very encapsulated, very safe … you
can sleep with your doors open at night and … um, it is not like that anymore the … the
Afrikaner doesn’t like it, I think.76
This participant starts by describing apartheid South Africa (‘with the
white government’) as a place that was ‘very encapsulated’ from Africa
because ‘you kept your borders closed’. His conclusion implies that
opening the borders and ‘becoming Africa’ has resulted in the country
becoming unsafe, hinting at the powerful image of ‘Africa’ as a place of
violence and criminality. He argues that ‘Africa’ with all its negative connotations is now ‘too close to home’ and he experiences South Africa ‘becoming Africa’ as something negative. He concludes that ‘the Afrikaner
doesn’t like it’.
Talk of Africa (and Africans) was universally negative, and usually associated with images of uncivilized chaos, decay, or barbarism; it was used
as ‘evidence’ for predictions about South Africa’s future:
(24) Q: So you don’t see becoming part of Africa as a positive thing?
A: No. I’ve been everywhere in Africa. I have been fucking high up in this continent and
I can tell you that the further away from SA you go the shittier it gets. If you need your
passport to drive across the border into Africa then it’s not worth it. There are no more
tarred roads that you can drive on. I’m sorry, standards lower immediately when there are
no more white people involved. Because kaffirs’ standards are lower than our standards.
They are busy swallowing us and it is getting worse and worse. Look at Zim, the white
people have left, the place is a fuckup.77
These narratives of the civilizing power of white people, the inferiority of
blacks, and the inability of black people to govern themselves were key
justifications for the colonial project. As Rudyard Kipling wrote a century
before:
Take up the White Man’s burden –
The savage wars of peace –
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.78
76. Interview, male, 32 years, 5 December 2007.
77. Interview, male, 27 years, 5 December 2007.
78. Rudyard Kipling, ‘The White Man’s Burden’, reprinted in the Modern History
Sourcebook, <http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/kipling.html> (22 February 2011).
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AFRICAN AFFAIRS
The references in Interview extract 24 to the perceived post-colonial decay
following the withdrawal of the white colonists in Africa is a direct echo of
the sentiment in the final line of Kipling’s poem – that the noble work of
‘civilizing’ and ‘curing’ the natives will [always] ‘come to nought’ as a
direct result of their apparently incurable ‘sloth’ and ‘folly’. The apartheid
ideology was even less optimistic than Kipling’s, abandoning the notion
that black Africans were civilizable. For example, Verwoerd justified the
separate and intentionally inferior education of black South Africans with
the argument that ‘there is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour … . What is the use of
teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice?’79
These racist discourses were the primary ideological drivers of colonialism and apartheid and yet they are spoken in modern-day Bloemfontein
without apology, hedging or defence. Indeed, in Interview extract 24 the
dropping of ‘standards’ is equated to being ‘swallowed’ – as if whiteness
is consumed or obliterated once ‘standards lower’. The following participant cites similar ‘evidence’ within South Africa:
(25) Realistically speaking I don’t think that we will ever be in power again, so the
country will never come right again … um, the country will only go backwards, crime will
only increase … um, everything will only go backwards … um, yes, so there is nothing … .
That you can make a living here, I won’t argue with that, but I am not optimistic that
things can go well again.80
This participant sets up the apartheid past as a ‘golden age’ when ‘we’
were in charge and the country was ‘right’. Now that whites are no longer
in power, he argues, South Africa can ‘only go backwards’ and ‘can never
come right again’. Once again, this central pillar of apartheid ideology –
that blacks are incapable of governing themselves – is recycled openly,
without shame or defence. Other participants were subtler in their
support of racist apartheid ideology:
(26) I see myself as an African, but I don’t want to associate myself with half of the things
they do.81
This participant had stated elsewhere that ‘Africans are black’ and
excluded himself from this category based on race:
(27) Q: What comes to mind when I say ‘African’?
A: Somebody who is black and speaks a black language.82
79. Hendrik F. Verwoed (no date), as cited in Michael Morris, Every Step of the Way: The
journey to freedom in South Africa (HSRC Press, Cape Town, 2004), p. 165.
80. Interview, male, 34 years, 30 November 2007.
81. Ibid.
82. Ibid.
WHITENESS, RACISM, AND AFRIKANER IDENTITY
571
This participant is grappling with the dilemma of trying to lay claim to
‘African’ identity while at the same time resisting the association that the
category has with blackness (‘the things they do’). Since we already know
that this participant excluded himself from the category ‘African’ based
on race (Interview extract 27), we should be suspicious of the reason he
offers in Interview extract 26, namely the actions of Africans. This appears
to be another example of ‘separation de-“racialized”’.83 When ‘race’ is
removed as a reason for separation (instead citing actions), racial separation arguments have more credibility. It is interesting to note that,
despite the fact that he claims to see himself as an ‘African’, he still refers
to other ( presumably black) Africans as ‘they’. The next participant (who
had also previously defined Africans as black) again argues for separation
based on actions, instead of race:
(28) Now it’s not a question of I don’t want to be a part of their country but … they are
busy fucking it up so much that I am not interested anymore. Do you understand? If it
worked well then I would have said ‘awesome’. Do you understand what I am trying to
say? So it’s not a question of … I don’t want to be part of it … because they are black. I
don’t want to part of it because it is so shit there.84
This participant also produces racial separation, black South Africans as
‘they’ and South Africa as ‘their’ country. She argues that she feels separated from black South Africans, not because ‘they are black’, but because
they are ‘fucking up’ the country. These participants are arguing for the
same racial separation and white supremacy inherent in apartheid discourse; however, in a post-apartheid South Africa they cannot do so
based on race. Instead, they are basing their arguments for separation on
the actions of black South Africans and apparent evidence of mismanagement and decay. Therefore, although they give the appearance of rejecting
apartheid, they are fully engaged in recycling apartheid discourse and
ideology.
A parallel (and more potent) strategy for justifying racial separation was
by reproducing apartheid discourses of racial threat. Under apartheid
rule, many of the regime’s most oppressive measures were justified by
cataclysmic discourses, such as referring to blacks as Die Swart Gevaar
(‘The Black Threat’) or describing the strategy of the anti-apartheid resistance movement as ‘the total onslaught’.85 These discourses of racial
threat have clearly survived the transition to democracy almost intact
amongst these participants:
83. Richard Ballard, ‘Assimilation, emigration, semigration, and integration: “white”
people’s strategies for finding a comfort zone in post-apartheid South Africa’ in Distiller and
Steyn (eds), Under Construction, pp. 55–61, p. 55.
84. Interview, female, 25 years, 30 November 2007.
85. For example, De Wet Potgieter, Total Onslaught: Apartheid’s dirty tricks exposed (Zebra
Press, Cape Town, 2007).
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AFRICAN AFFAIRS
(29) You know, I can tell you that Afrikaners have been much further up in this land, but
the kaffirs have now already pushed us onto the point of the continent and they are going
to push us into the sea. There are already no more in Zimbabwe, there are a few, but they
are going to systematically push us into the sea, brother. It’s a question of time. They are
going to make it unprofitable for us to be in this country and we are all going to fuck off.
That is exactly what they are going to do. And those that are left behind are going to stay
behind until they are all dead in 80 years time and then it is all over, then there are no
more white people in this country.86
The imagery this participant uses – of whites ‘pushed … onto the point of
the continent’ – is reminiscent of Verwoerd’s description of South Africa
as a ‘piece of Europe on the tip of the African continent’.87 Apartheid
South Africa was often held up as the ‘last stand’ for whites in Africa.
Note that this ‘push’ is described as happening ‘systematically’, which
suggests that it is hostile as well as organized and intentional. This participant then follows the narrative to its cataclysmic conclusion, with the
whites either ‘all dead’ or ‘pushed into the sea’. Therefore, he is producing a scenario in which whites are facing a systematic onslaught that will
quite literally exterminate them as a group – a narrative of genocide. The
images of being crowded, of being pushed, and of being forced out were
common ones in these interviews:
(30) It, it, there is not … really a lot of space for us here.
Q: You don’t think it will improve?
A: No, no-no, no, no. No it will take hundreds of years. It will really … take a very long
time. And, and … you know … the white Afrikaners are being forced out of the country.
You know these … children who can’t find work, what are they going to do?88
Although this participant was more optimistic than others, in suggesting
that things can improve, his timescale is as bleak as their dismissal of
hope: ‘it will take hundreds of years’. He argues that white Afrikaners are
‘being forced out of the country’ because they ‘can’t find work’. Being
‘forced out’ is something done actively, suggesting that unemployment is
not just random bad fortune, but part of a systematic onslaught.
It is clear that, despite rejecting the system of apartheid, participants
were actively recycling the ideologies and discourses of apartheid – and
usually without hedging or defence. Their talk gave the impression of
overtly rejecting apartheid discourse, but the key tenets of racist apartheid
discourse were still central to their production of contemporary Afrikaner
identity.
86.
87.
88.
Interview, male, 27 years, 5 December 2007.
As cited in Ballard, ‘Assimilation, emigration, semigration, and integration’, p. 54.
Interview, male, 55 years, 30 November 2007.
WHITENESS, RACISM, AND AFRIKANER IDENTITY
573
The past, present, and future of Afrikaner identity
Against the backdrop of the demise of apartheid and Afrikaner nationalism, it is hardly surprising that Afrikaners (whose identity was and is intimately tied to Afrikaner nationalism) are involved in attempts to
reconstruct their identity. This study used the Afrikaner/African distinction as a mechanism to investigate constructions of Afrikaner identity in
post-apartheid South Africa.
Participants constructed sanitized versions of Afrikaner identity. In
doing so they jettisoned the aspects of public Afrikaner identity, which
threatened to tie them to the accountable past. These were aspects such
as die taal (the language), the Voortrekkers or brandy-drinking Boers in
long socks and short pants. Since these images would anchor their own
identities as Afrikaners in the past, they would also increase the accountability of present-day Afrikaners for the sins of their predecessors and
these images were therefore discarded as identity liabilities in postapartheid South Africa.
However, there were no indications that participants were discursively
redrawing group boundaries, such that ‘Afrikaner’ becomes a part of a
broader ‘African’ identity as suggested in the optimistic ‘rainbow nation’
discourse accompanying the transition to democracy. Instead, while distancing themselves from historical Afrikaner identity, they still laid claim
to whiteness more generally and consolidated their shared identity with
English South Africans by producing exposure to a shared threat. In the
instances where participants claimed the category ‘African’, they were also
careful to defend against any hint of shared identity with blackness or
black Africans. We had expected that participants would lay claim to the
category ‘African’ in so far as it would give rights in the new South
Africa: rights to work; to own land; and to participate in politics. We were
surprised that ‘African-ness’ was simply not valued in relation to
‘Afrikaner-ness’, and participants made little attempt to reposition themselves in relation to the black African ’other‘.
Instead, participants reproduced exactly the same racist ideologies of
blackness that drove and justified colonialism and apartheid. Despite their
protestations against the moral injustices of apartheid, they reproduced
the worst colonial and apartheid ideologies without hedging or shame, including: black incompetence, the failure of black government, the inevitable decay of post-colonial (i.e. post-European) Africa, the intrinsic
criminality and aggression of black Africans, and the cataclysmic belief
that black Africans will ultimately eradicate white people from Africa
through emigration-under-duress or genocide.
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AFRICAN AFFAIRS
Although this analysis has identified a limited range of strategies for
producing Afrikaner identity in post-apartheid South Africa, it is nonetheless clear it has identified ways in which Afrikaner identity can be constructed in relation to Africa and African-ness.89 It should be noted that
there were no discernible differences between the strategies and constructions of male and female participants.
These findings are admittedly based on a small and localized sample,
which limits the extent to which they can be considered general expressions of Afrikaner identity. However, the fact that these constructions
could be produced at all in such an everyday social context, and the fact
that they were consistently produced by all 15 Afrikaners of different ages
(including some who were only nine years old when apartheid officially
ended) makes these results all the more disconcerting.
These discourses of threat and genocide are gaining ground in public
discourses of Afrikaner identity, with farm murders in South Africa increasingly being labelled ‘genocide’ by Afrikaner politicians.90 This is
concerning, because it is when the out-group can be constructed as a
genuine threat to the existence of the in-group that extreme acts can be
justified as noble and just, although this discursive step was not taken by
participants in the present study.91
Annelie Botes responded with genuine surprise to the furore she
caused when she confessed that she does not like black people and is
‘scared of them’.92 She said ‘sometimes you chop wood and you don’t
consider where the splinters will land … maybe it was impulsive … But I
certainly meant what I said.’93 The present study provides further evidence for Brand’s suspicion that Botes simply said ‘things publicly that
one usually only hears around the braaivleis (barbeque) in white suburbia’.94 It also confirms that a key part of contemporary Afrikaner identity
is ‘considering where the splinters might land’ and managing public and
private identity as strictly separate enterprises. In public you must be ‘very
aware of not saying anything in front of people of a different colour which
89. David Silverman, ‘Analysing talk and text’ in Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna
S. Lincoln (eds), Handbook of Qualitative Research (Sage, Thousand Oaks, 2000), pp. 821–
34.
90. For example, Afriforum, ‘Fifa 2010: a celebration of genocide’, <http://www.
fifa2010genocide.com> (26 June 2010).
91. Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Rakshi Rath, ‘Making a virtue of evil: a
five-step social identity model of the development of collective hate’, Social and Personality
Psychology Compass 2, 3 (2008), pp. 1313–44.
92. Groenewald and Harbour, ‘Author Annelie Botes stands by racist comments’.
93. Ibid.
94. Brand, ‘Annelie Botes exposes braaivleis banter’.
WHITENESS, RACISM, AND AFRIKANER IDENTITY
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might offend them’95 and you ‘don’t tell a kaffir he’s a kaffir’,96 but in
private the racist ideologies of apartheid are still central to productions of
Afrikaner identity – at least for these 15 middle-class residents of suburban Bloemfontein.
95.
96.
Interview, extract 15.
Interview, extract 16.